With this issue, we say farewell to the two talented scholars who have made BR’s Bible Books column a lively forum for discussion of the latest in Bible scholarship: James VanderKam, professor of Old Testament at Notre Dame University, and Elizabeth Johnson, associate professor of New Testament, New Brunswick Theological Seminary. The two were named BR’s book review editors in June 1992 and they have turned what was then a minor column—often with only one or two reviews per issue—into one of the magazine’s prize features.
Happily, their departure is balanced by the arrival of two distinguished scholars who we hope will take the book review section even further: Ronald Hendel, associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas; and Anthony J. Saldarini, professor in the Department of Theology at Boston College.
The author of The Epic of the Patriarch: The Jacob Cycle and the Narrative Traditions of Canaan and Israel (Scholars Press, 1987) and former excavator at the Tel Lachish Archaeological Project in Israel, Hendel received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1985. For BR, he is the author of “When the Sons of God Cavorted with the Daughters of Men,”BR 03:02.
Saldarini, who received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1971, specializes in New Testament, apocrypha and post-biblical studies. He is the author of Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees (Glazier, 1988) and Jesus and Passover (Paulist, 1984). He and Hendel have participated frequently in BAS’s Travel/Study programs, lecturing most recently at a seminar in San Diego on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
We look forward to reading the insightful critiques, debates, kudos and occasional slams that they will bring to the magazine.
Also with this issue, we are pleased to announce the promotion of two staff members: Suzanne F. Singer becomes Executive Editor and Steven Feldman moves to Managing Editor.
Angels Abounding
Do you believe in angels? Almost 70% of the people Time magazine asked in a recent poll said that they did. Angels are appearing everywhere—in plays and movies, as jewelry adornments and in seminars and classes. Angels are so popular that both Time and Newsweek ran feature articles on them in their Christmas issues last year, and six of the top 20 bestsellers on Publisher’s Weekly January 1994 list were on the subject of celestial beings. Most striking of all, one out of every seven people, reported the Ladies’ Home Journal (December 1992), has personally encountered an angel.
The subjects of all this attention are not the fiery-visaged bearers of God’s news that we find in the Old Testament. They do not come proclaiming God’s will or the birth of a child, impending destruction or words of praise. Today’s angels are nothing to fear. They appear as mysterious saving voices, shimmers of light, moments of grace or as benign helpers who whisk threats or pain or fear away. As Eileen Freeman, author of one of the bestsellers on angels and editor of the California-based newsletter Angelwatch, put it, “Each of us has a guardian angel…. They’re nonthreatening, wise and loving beings. They offer help whether we ask for it or not. But mostly we ignore them.”
An interest in angels is hardly new. Early Christians in Colossians worshipped them, much to the apostle Paul’s dismay (Colossians 2:18). Accounting for the recent upsurge in angel interest, an article in Washingtonian magazine (December 1993) explains that people are turning away from the material and to the spiritual because they have not found satisfaction in worldly pursuits. The appearance of angels, according to the article, “for some people, is proof of a meaningful pattern underlying seemingly random events—the revelation of a divine plan.”
Moving Out, Moving In and Moving Up
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